


This Takes The Lemon Cake

by LogicGunn



Series: The Long Dark [2]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, The Long Dark (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Long Dark Fusion, Fluff, Hunting, M/M, Post-Apocalyptic, Rodney's POV, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-24 19:08:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22002997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LogicGunn/pseuds/LogicGunn
Summary: John teaches Rodney the finer points of hunting.
Relationships: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard
Series: The Long Dark [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1583821
Comments: 21
Kudos: 78





	This Takes The Lemon Cake

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: graphic descriptions of field dressing a deer. I'm serious. If you don't like the idea of hunting this might not be the fic for you. I won't blame you if you give it a miss. :)

Rodney likes to think he’s done a first-rate job of being his best, least annoying self since they crashed onto Great Bear Island, but actually...he’s done now. 

“No.” 

“Rodney-” 

“No John, absolutely not. I can’t and I won’t and you can’t make me.” 

“Rodney, you have to-” 

“If you don’t drop it, I won’t blow you for a month.” 

John just stands there, knife in hand and hunting bow at his feet, mouth tight shut and one eyebrow raised. 

“I mean it, John. This is where I draw the line. I’ve done some pretty amazing and disgusting things in the name of survival, but this takes the lemon cake. What you’re asking of me is impossible. I can’t do it. It’s too much. If it’s this or death, I choose death.” 

He tries to glare John into submission, but John just takes it, waiting patiently, twirling the blade in his hand like a baton. 

“If you want to do this, you’re on your own. I’ll leave a bucket of hot water out back so you can clean up after. And a towel. A warm fluffy towel with a couple of drops of eucalyptus oil and some clean, dry clothes. But that’s as much as I’m willing to do to help you in this madness.” 

John pouts his bottom lip out. It’s a trait Rodney wouldn’t have expected in the usually stoic and reserved man but the more he’s gotten to know him the more he realises that John is a teenage girl in a man’s body. He’s almost moved, but nobody has ever accused Rodney McKay of being a good sport. 

“I _can’t_ John. I really, really can’t.” Oh, Christ, he’s pleading. That’s never a good idea, it's a sign of weakness and John’s military, he knows how to exploit weakness. And then there's a smirk and a sigh and Rodney knows, just knows, that he’s about to get elbow-deep in deer guts and blood and other bodily fluids, and it’s all John Sheppard’s stupid fault. 

*** 

“Are you sure it’s dead?” 

“As a doornail. Look.” John nudges the deer’s flank with the toe of his left boot. It undulates with the force but doesn’t so much as twitch. “Dead.” 

Rodney looks the deer over. John has an exceptional aim. He hit it in the jugular with an arrow from a great distance and it bled out so fast that it barely made it a couple of steps before it collapsed in an expanding pool of blood on the snow-covered ground. It’s sort of photogenic; the contrast of red on white would make a great Christmas card if the subject matter wasn’t so gruesome. 

John tells Rodney to ready his rifle - "Just in case a predator catches the scent of all that blood.” - then flips the deer onto its back and props it in place with some big rocks. 

*** 

“First thing you gotta do is detach the colon.” 

“Detach the colon, right.” 

“So you take your blade and cut around the anus-” 

Rodney can’t help it, he sniggers. 

John whips his head around. “Rodney, focus. This is serious.” 

“Serious, right.” 

“If you don’t do this part right you’ll contaminate the meat and the kill will be worthless.” 

“I’m focussed! One hundred percent. Cut around the anus...” 

John turns back to the deer and makes the first cut. “Cut about an inch deep to detach the colon, a little deeper if you need to but don’t pierce it, then you need to tie it off with some string...” 

*** 

“So next you gotta cut up the midline.” John flips his knife around and offers it handle-first to Rodney. “Do you want to give it a go?” 

Rodney takes a step back and clutches the rifle to his chest. “No, thank you.” 

“Okay, I’ll let you sit it out this time, but we’re sticking to the see-one-do-one-teach-one philosophy of the medical profession cause it’s worked so far.” 

“Can’t we just stick to eating hares? I mean is it really necessary to hunt something so big?” 

“We’ve been through this. We’ll end up hunting the hares to extinction if we don’t diversify. There are hundreds of deer on the island and one kill can feed us for two months.” 

Rodney scans the horizon for predators to stall for time but he knows he’s going to have to man up here. What’s the point in putting it off? It’s a small amount of suffering for a big reward, like sitting through the gratuitous bits of a horror film to get to the happy ending. Only this happy ending is dinner and dinner is survival. “Okay,” he sighs, shoving his gloves in his pocket. “I’ll do it. Give me the knife.” 

*** 

“Curve around the genitals, then a nice straight line up the body and over the sternum. Not too deep, we can always go over it again, but you really don’t want to pierce anything inside.” 

“Not too deep. Got it.” Rodney holds the knife in his right hand and sticks it into the incision that John had already made. He cuts around the testes in a fluid arc, and maybe it’s a bit wide but it’s neat and John hums approvingly so it must be okay. Holding the knife steady he feels for the sternum with the other hand and mentally maps out his line up the stomach of the animal, then slices the skin swiftly and with intent all the way up to the breastbone. 

“Okay, that was great Rodney. Now go over that incision just a little deeper all the way up.” 

Following the line a second time is a little harder and a little slower but he keeps his hand steady and starts to cut through the fatty tissue underneath the skin. As the flesh parts, some of the innards bulge out and touch his hand, and Rodney drops the knife in the snow in shock and scuttles back. “Oh my God! Oh my God! It’s hot!” 

John laughs. “Of course it’s hot. It’s only been dead ten minutes.” 

“Can we wait till it cools down a bit?” 

“It’s a lot quicker and easier to dress a fresh kill.” 

“Great.” Rodney picks the blade back up and shuffles back up to the deer on his knees. 

*** 

“That’s a great incision Rodney. Next bit is to crack through the sternum but I’ll have to show you how to do that. It’s real easy to hurt yourself if you’re not careful.” 

John swaps the rifle for the knife and Rodney stands up and kicks the ache out of his thigh muscles. He watches as John cracks through the ribcage of the deer with the blade, half fascinated and half light-headed by the sound it makes. When John parts the ribs and saws through the windpipe Rodney gags, but manfully keeps his breakfast down in his stomach. 

“That’s pretty much it. Now we just pull the innards out. Give me a hand?” 

Rodney checks again for predators then puts the rifle down by his feet and rolls up his sleeves. The carcass is splayed open and Rodney can taste bile in the back of his mouth as they dip their hands in the cavity to take the insides out. It’s so warm inside. Warm and wet and squidgy and _oh my god so gross._ What he wouldn’t give for some gloves: those thick, full-length rubber gloves that vets use when working on cows or horses. The guts spill out in one jumbled mass onto the snow and they roll the hollowed-out deer onto its stomach to drain the last of the blood. 

“That was great, well done!” 

“Don’t patronise me, that was terrible.” 

“It was textbook, Rodney, I swear.” 

“Well...I am a genius and a fast learner. What do we do with the guts?” 

“Leave them for the wolves. We don’t need them. Next, I’ll show you how to skin and quarter it.” 

*** 

Back at the office, John teaches Rodney how to pack the meat with ice and salt in the fish box to age it. 

“Two days?! All that blood and...and I touched its innards _and_ its testicles...and we can’t eat it for two whole days?” 

“You gotta let the meat rest before it’s edible. Something about enzymes breaking down the tissue. Two days and we can have venison steak for dinner.” 

“This had better be the best damn venison steak in the galaxy after all that.” 

*** 

Thanks to Rodney’s genius (and the fact that he discovered the office was fitted with a back burner) they’ve had running hot water for a few months now. Most nights before bed they can be found huddled together in the tiny shower, scrubbing each other pink with a cloth and Rodney’s home-made herb soap (having an undergrad in chemistry has finally paid off). Tonight the shower is almost cold by the time they’ve sluiced all the blood off themselves and their clothes, and they linger in front of the stove for a long while to dry off and warm up. Rodney basks in the sight of John’s bare ass and muscled thighs as he spoons yesterday’s leftover hare stew into bowls, and by the time they’ve finished off their dinner he's wound up to the point of breaking. 

“It’s really hot how you can kill something so big with one tiny little arrow,” he says as he sidles around the counter. 

“Yeah?” 

“Mmhmm. All that manly prowess.” He takes John’s coffee mug from his hand and places it on the counter, sliding between John’s parted thighs and leaning in to capture his mouth. “Bed?” 

“Bed.” 

*** 

They don’t make it upstairs, instead they end up entwined on the bearskin rug in front of the stove, breath hitching and thighs trembling. Rodney lays his head on John’s chest and listens to the pounding of his heart, alive and healthy and strong, as they recover. 

“How _did_ you kill the deer so efficiently?” asks Rodney, dragging his fingers through the hair on John’s chest. 

“Practise.” 

“Practise? You’ve used the bow maybe a handful of times since we found it.” 

“When I was a kid. Archery lessons. You’re sleeping with the silver medal winner of the 1977 Californian Junior League Winter Archery Tournament.” 

“I’m all kinds of impressed.” 

“You should be. I still have the MT-3 Ocelot compound bow I used in the competition. And the Jennings Arrowstar I won as a prize.” 

“Okay, that’s pretty cool actually.” 

“I wish my dad had thought so.” 

John rarely talks about his family or his childhood. The things he has let slip paint a picture of a lonely childhood spent struggling to measure up to his father’s legacy and an absentee step-mother who preferred to spend her time socialising with the stable hands rather than with her sons. John’s application to the air force was written as a fuck you, a giant middle finger to the excesses of his legacy with a follow-through only when his parents hit the roof over his acceptance. 

It was three months before Rodney realised that John was a Sheppard as in _the Sheppards,_ and another two before he confessed to a summer spent freelancing for Sheppard Industries in his youth. That he literally handed SI the means to power the world with renewable energy on a platter and was rebuked at the highest level only compounded John’s obvious resentment of his parents. 

_“I'm the smartest man in the world, how could he not want to invest in my research?”_

_“Not enough profit. It was always about maximising the bottom line with my father.”_

Even disowned John’s probably worth billions in stocks and shares. Or at least he would have been before the crash. 

“Let me guess, if it wasn’t gold it didn’t matter?” 

“Pretty much.” 

“Who won first place?” 

“My brother.” 

*** 

Two days later John unwraps a haunch and butchers it into serviceable portions. Most of it he freezes in the outdoor icebox that Rodney built from pieces of the derailed train, but two steaks are sizzling in a pan on the stove when Rodney comes in from collecting firewood. 

“Oh, that smells good. Save the-” 

“-fat in the pan for your soap. I remember.” 

“Great, thanks.” He kisses John on the cheek absentmindedly and pulls away to dump the firewood but John pulls him straight back in for a proper kiss, a lewd kiss, the kind that opens Rodney’s eyes to all kinds of dizzying possibilities and derails his train of thought. 

“Um...wow...I, uh, firewood. Stacking. Yes.” 

John laughs and turns back to the steaks, flipping them over to heat through from the other side. It’s domestic and familiar, this life they’re leading, and Rodney wouldn’t trade it in for the world (deer innards notwithstanding). 


End file.
